THE HERALD OF THE NEW SOUTH

WRITTEN FOR THE MEMORIAL TO HENRY WOODFEN GRADY,
ATLANTA, GA.

MUST we concede the life so swiftly flown
That seemed but yesterday to breathe
our own-
The pulsing stayed that through our lands he
sent,
In whose one impact North and South were
blent-
His cords, yet, vital, stilled with tone abounding-
His heartstrings sundered by their vibrant
sounding?

Too well we feel the import of our fears,
The wide-flashed word, "The South is steeped
in tears."
Fitly she weeps for her chivalric son
Who turned to her, in flush of triumph won,
The filial voice to gain her glad applause -
The golden tongue to plead - to gild her
cause.

That spirit note - the music of his speech,
Is silenced now in earthly hearings reach;
Snapped is the silvern thread - the resonant
soul -
Though severed, still its pæns reverberant
roll-
All hearts their hope-rung chants in mourning
merge,
All joyous dreams translate into a dirge.

Fallen in hero prime of conscious power,
His fame lives on and soothes her anguished
hour;
Yields to the land of Calhoun and of Clay
His name as heirloom to her later day -
A legacy by life's oblation left,
A breathing solace to a home bereft.

But is the zenith reached his record done,
His duty closed beneath meridian sun?
Was it for him like meteor flash to sweep -
Athwart the heavens, as vaulting lightnings
leap
On living errand our dimmed orbit cleave -
On mission radiate, yet no message leave?

Ah, no - his flame rose not to fall anon -
His words as phrase to glitter and be gone;
Not evanescent in the minds of men,
His ling'ring oratory speaks again -
An era's nuncio in a nation's view -
An envoy of another South, and new.
For now through prescience 'neath his Southern
skies
The grander vision greets our Northern eyes;
The proud mirage he conjured up we see -
His picturing of her potency to be,
Her virile wealth of sun and soil and ore
Her new-born freedom's force far nobler store.

With sectional lines and marring feuds effaced,
Their racial problems solved - their blots
erased-
Full in that vision circumfused shall rise
A symbol that his life rays crystallize,
For all our state loves lit in him to stand -
For bonds that Georgia's genius lent to all our
land.